Wireless Networking for Ubuntu Edgy

This setup is for those wireless cards that seem to be detected but never seem to work. On my notebook using a Cisco Arionet 350 no matter what I did, to set it up it just would not work. The card was detected by the system the lights indicated that it was trying to talk to the wireless network, but it failed to get on the network. This tutorial was a quick answer.

Step #1: Verify Card Detection

As root it was first necessary to see exactly what the system was detecting.

sudo pccardctl ident

Socket 0:
product info: "Cisco Systems", "350 Series Wireless LAN Adapter", "", ""
manfid: 0x015f, 0x000a
function: 6 (network)

Step#2: Save Detected Information
Edit this file to add the configuration changes. Note that it is not a simple copy and paste, there are a few differences like the bind statment so look closely.

vi /etc/pcmcia/config/opts

Card ""Cisco Systems", "350 Series Wireless LAN Adapter", "", ""
manfid: 0x015f, 0x000a
function: 6 (network)
bind "ath_pci"

Step #3: Stop the Card
sudo kill -HUP `cat /var/run/cardmgr.pid`

Step #4: Check Configuration

Use this command to see if the changes are detected.

lshw

*-network
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 2
logical name: eth1
serial: 00:0b:fd:63:b2:7d
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes ip=192.168.5.176 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11-DS

As you can see it now has an IP Address and all is working.